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Exam Drug Fails to Live up to its Expectations

Exam season is always a stressful time for students and
every time it comes around everyone prepares in their own to make sure they can
perform their best, even if it means taking performance enhancing drugs. There’s
a prescription drug called Modafinil that can enhance your concentration. Personally I've never heard of anything like this till yesterday, the only drug I heard of
at exam season is caffeine pills. Loads of students would take caffeine pills
at exam season to try and stay up and revise or pull an all-nighter the day
before the exam to cram in as much information as possible. But sometimes that didn’t end up well because
some students would end up taking too much caffeine pills and faint during the
exam and subsequently need to be hospitalised for overdose.

The psycho-stimulant Modafinil is prescribed to students to
help them improve their concentration when reading and note taking in the preparation
for final exams. It’s been proven to enhance the students with poorer
performance and it actually lowered the performance of smarter students.

The
study was conducted by the University of Nottingham to test the efficiency of Modafinil
and it was discovered that while reaction
times were improved, the qualities of answers were not improved after the test
was run on 32 people. However in creative and lateral thinking tests is where
the smartest of the 32 testers were found to actually perform worse.

One of the students being trailed on even
said, “'I did notice some improved mental
clarity. By 1pm I was just feeling all round very itchy. Furthermore, I was
starting to feel really anxious. I went home from work at 2pm due to the
crippling anxiety.” He said to the reporter at Graduate-jobs.[1]

Overall, Modafinil is not
efficient drug and it may even hinder your performance in examinations. It is
always better to avoid any “exam drugs” at exam time to prevent any problems occurring
at the most important time of your life, and just revise and do your best. And
if you want any supplement to help yourself, cod-liver fish oil pills are a
good supplement which is known to enhance brain-function and cognition.